CI 5321 Post 2: Collaboration

This week, we learned a lot about how collaboration is almost necessary to incorporate in order to create a successful online or distance course. I think this is a really important idea to note and pay attention to when instruction an online course, but also when teaching in general.

In my educational career, I have had the opportunity to take part in many online courses. It all started in high school with my College Composition course. This course consisted almost entirely of reading texts and responding to them by writing papers. Looking back, the only interaction I had with other students involving this course was that which I initiated myself. I would frequently speak with my friend who was taking the face-to-face version of the course. I believe these interactions helped me to understand the texts we were supposed to read. Other than from these short interactions with my friend, I feel like I barely learned anything from this course. I was able to practice my writing skills, but I don't remember learning anything new, at least not about composition.

When I think about my most interactive online course I've taken, it has to be my final Spanish course I had to take for my undergraduate career. This course was completely online, which made learning a language very difficult. However, one thing that helped me learn in this course was the required interactions with my peers. I know there were many opportunities to collaborate with my classmates, but the type of collaboration I remember the most was video-recorded conversations with my peers. Every other week or so, I would have to hold a relatively long conversation with different peers about the topics of the week. We would have to speak with each other about these topics for something like 15 or 20 minutes on YouTube Live, then send the recordings to our teacher. This was really helpful because I was able to collaborate with different people who were at a similar Spanish-speaking level as I was, and we were able to just hold a conversation and work together to figure things out.

I think peer collaboration is important in any learning context, as it allows the learners to lean on each other as they work their way up the wall of education. It also provides more motivation for the learners, as they have to depend on one another in order to complete their work. There is something to be said about how much students can fear disappointing their peers or letting them down.